Managing Business Marketing and Sales: An International Perspective

Citation

Rich, M.K. (2007), "Managing Business Marketing and Sales: An International Perspective", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbim.2007.08022eae.001

Managing Business Marketing and Sales: An International Perspective

Per V. Jenster, H. Michael Hayes and David E. SmithCopenhagen Business School PressKøgeISBN 87-630-0147-0

Overview

Over half of the world’s economic activity consists of exchanges between organizations. Most of these organizations are commercial enterprises, existing to provide products or services to other organizations or to an ultimate consumer. The global dimension of business marketing adds to its excitement and intellectual challenge. Goods and services for business markets have always traveled easily across country borders. Statistics about the large US merchandise trade deficit tends to ignore the fact that in 2004, the USA exported $5.35 billion in capital goods and industrial supplies, more than 66 percent of the total merchandise exports in the world. In comparison, the exports of most other industrialized countries are heavily weighted toward business markets, with perhaps the exception of automobiles and consumer electronics.

Historically, there has been a tendency to equate business marketing with heavy smokestack industries. Today, the scope of business marketing is much broader. Steel companies still buy heavy rolling mills but new products and new industries have emerged as major elements of business marketing. Computers, once sold only to large organizations, are now sold to thousands of organizations, both large and small. The medical industry has emerged as a major purchaser, not just of health care equipment, but also of all the other products and services necessary to the functioning of a large industry. Attention to services, once of concern principally as an adjunct to related products, is increasing both because of the importance of services in their own right and as they are being unbundled from their related products.

The extensive growth and development of global marketing has given rise to the need for additional insights into maximizing any organization’s efforts, both strategic and financial, in developing an extended global reach with related products and services. The correct approach to the markets for business products and services can mean the gain of millions of dollars, euros, pounds or yen. This book offers a significant number of approaches, concepts, theories and frameworks for analyzing, formulating and implementing business marketing and sales strategies. The work effectively links marketing and management approaches for global effectiveness; approaches that offer new perspectives on the current state of marketing concepts and techniques linked to sound management foundations. This is accomplished by structuring the first five chapters around the context of marketing planning and includes corporate and business planning and a separate chapter on industry analysis. The remaining seven chapters address segmentation and product, pricing, communication and distribution decisions.

About the authors

Per V. Jenster is Professor of Strategic Management and Marketing at the China Europe International Business School. Previously he was a Professor of Strategic Management at Copenhagen Business School and Associate Dean as well as formerly on the marketing faculty of IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and the University of Virginia. He has been widely published based on his research in related fields. In addition to his academic role, he serves as an outside director on a number of boards. During his time in industry, he served as a senior management consultant in the areas of strategic management, marketing planning, competitive analysis, and cost evaluation studies.

H. Michael Hayes is Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Strategic Management at the University of Colorado at Denver. Previous to that position, he was Manager-Executive Education at General Electric’s Management Development Institute. In addition to a long career with GE in Industrial Marketing and Executive Education, he served as a visiting professor at IMD and at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has written extensively on industrial purchasing and management development, has written a number of marketing and business strategy cases, which have been published in leading textbooks, and was Director of Graduate Programs for the Business School at the University of Colorado at Denver.

David E. Smith is Professor of Marketing at the National University, School of Business and Management in San Diego, California and a Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Center of Market Economics, in Denmark. His research includes journal articles, books, grants and conference proceedings, which total more than 60 works. He serves on the editorial boards of several well-known journals in the field. His industry experience includes 30 years of extensive sales and marketing management experience in business marketing in more than 50 countries.

The authors have more than 90 years of academic and business experience, from Europe, Asia, South America and the USA. They share this knowledge in a well-structured, but easily read, text designed for both MBA students and practitioners alike.

Content

This work divides into three main areas:

1. 1.

   The conceptual frameworks, consisting of two chapters: an overview of business marketing and marketing strategy and planning.

2. 2.

   Situation analysis, consisting of three chapters: how organizations buy, strategic analysis of an industry and business marketing intelligence: analysis and tools.

3. 3.

   Critical decisions encompassing eight chapters: selecting business markets, managing products for business markets, managing services for business markets, pricing strategy for business markets, e-business strategies for business markets, business marketing communications for personal selling and beyond personal selling with the final chapter being devoted to managing business marketing channels.

The structure of the book reflects the authors’ belief that these objectives are best accomplished through rigorous analysis of a large number of business marketing situations, guided by certain fundamental concepts and balanced through an exposure to marketing literature that reports on recent empirical research and conceptualizations. This is based on the authors’ experience in researching, writing and teaching cases to graduate students and executives.

This experience base has led to the conclusion that short of the opportunity for hands-on experience of real-world analysis, one of the best ways to acquaint the reader with the complexity and intellectual challenge of international business situations is through the case analysis process. It is recognized that no single collection of cases will be totally comprehensive so the authors have chosen instead to deliver frameworks that can be applied either to real-world situations being experienced by various corporations or to cases selected to develop a student’s understanding of the frameworks that are developed within the 13 chapters that span 287 pages. Each chapter averages 22 pages for easy assimilation in bite-sized pieces.

Closer examination of the text revealed that the authors have done a credible job in assembling past and current research approaches in answering key global marketing questions. Discussions concerning marketing strategy and planning found in chapter 3 revealed the Product-Market Opportunity Matrix first introduced in the Harvard Business Review in 1957, as well as what is known as the Boston Consulting Grid developed in 1977. What the authors have accomplished is linking these marketing tools into a framework that has international managerial implications that have value to anyone desiring a firmer grounding in what works and why it works in an international environment.

In Chapter 8, “The marketing of services,” several approaches are developed that shed unique perspectives on the global market for services.

The authors point out that for some businesses, the service offering is the core business whereas in others the service offering is an augmentation that helps differentiate its core product strategy. To illustrate the impact of varying perceptions of services offered and referring to Figure 1, the authors state: “In Quadrant A1, the services demanded are standardized in the market place where pure competition exists and margins are low. In Quadrant A2, customers are demanding more than standardized services, and require some degree of customization. Although customers do not perceive the high complexity, the services are seen as critical to the firm. Thus, relationship management and reputation often provide the supplier with higher margins. For services that are not seen as critical, although they may be viewed as complex as in Quadrant A3, there are limits to how much customers are willing to pay, despite the lack of competition. In Quadrant A4, the importance of the services and the perceived complexity will generally cause pricing to be of much less importance for the customer.” The authors conclude this chapter by indicating that all goods and services consist of a core element that is surrounded by a variety of optional elements. The previous extract illustrates how various research findings are interwoven into overall delivery of each concept covered in this work.

Figure 1

In summary, this book offers historical as well as current research into marketing issues delivered in a management context that should assist those interested in increasing their knowledge of global marketing approaches.

Michael K. RichSouthwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, Minnesota, USA